Display- Definitely not smoke and mirrors. If you’re a dealership that thought Display/Banner advertising wasn’t measurable or useful to you, I’ll kindly ask you to rethink that.Google has always given ways to measure the effectiveness of Banner Ads, but today we’re now exposed to a really cool reporting tool “Campaign Insights.”

At the moment, you can measure how many clicks your display ads achieve, measure conversions that result from those clicks, compare results with industry benchmark data, and use “View-through conversion reporting” to measure visits to your website from users who saw your display ad in the past.

Today, we’re launching a new tool to measure the impact of your display ads – Campaign Insights. As of today, Campaign Insights is available for larger display ad campaigns across the Google Content Network in the US and UK.

Campaign Insights is a unique measurement tool that can give reliable data about how a campaign has raised brand awareness, or active user interest, in a particular product or service. It looks beyond the traditional measures of clicks and conversions to calculate the incremental lift in both online search activity and website visits that result from a display ad campaign.

We use the same expertise we use to improve our own services — our ability to analyze large quantities of data. Campaign Insights compares two data sets: a large group of users (many thousands, minimum) who saw a particular ad, with an equivalent, large group that did not see the ad. It then measures whether there is any significant difference in searches and visits to your website between the two groups. Doing this, Campaign Insights can determine the incremental change that is directly attributable to the display ad campaign. With this insight, you can establish how well your display ad campaign is working beyond just clicks.

I find this so valuable especially for dealerships today when you’re ad budgets are slim, but you’ve made the wise decision in reallocating towards the internet. Value comes from real measurable results and with tools like this it helps “your interactive agency” improve month after month.  Remember being an internet dealer isn’t just trying some ppc for couple months. It’s a commitment in building your online reputation and constantly having a message out there in the web about your dealership. You should be working closely with you’re interactive agency to ensure that you are both on the same page with your dealership goals.

yours truly,

A.D